Galahad Matthews
Name: Galahad Pellenore Matthews Gender: Male Age: 18 Grade: 12 School: Saint Editha Academy Hobbies and Interests: Hockey, football (mostly watching, some playing), reading, scriptwriting, theatre tech, ROM hacking Appearance: '''Galahad has an incredibly average build, with a height of 5’7” and a weight of 150lbs. Despite spending several years playing hockey and football, he has very little in the way of muscle gain to show from this, his legs constantly on the verge of looking toned but never quite reaching that point. Galahad has fairly small hands, large blue eyes and struggles to grow much more facial hair than very light blonde fuzz on his chin, all of which combined makes him look even younger than he truly is. Galahad is Caucasian, with a very light tan thanks to his sporting activities. He has sandy-blonde hair that he keeps at a medium length, reaching midway down his neck at the back. It is fluffy and messy, as Galahad generally doesn’t bother to comb or brush it, and is often described as a ‘constant bedhead’. He has a rather small mouth, often formed into a nervous smile, and thin eyebrows above his aforementioned large blue eyes. Galahad struggles with acne, but to his relief, it mostly forms only on his upper back and shoulders. Galahad dresses casually and comfortably, favouring hoodies, t-shirts and jeans when he’s out and about, whilst switching to sweatpants when he’s lounging around at home. His favoured outfit is a sky blue zip up hoody, with a dark purple t-shirt featuring the words “What, you egg!” written in white, along with dark blue jeans and dark red Converse. He’s also recently taken to wearing a pair of old aviator goggles that he found in a local second-hand store, simply because he thinks they look cool. When Galahad was abducted, he was wearing his full school uniform, including blazer and tie, and slacks as per his personal preference. His one piece of attire that did not fall under the school’s dress code was his aviator goggles, which he had hanging around his neck. '''Biography: Galahad was the second child born to Dominic and Anthea Matthews. His older sister Guinevere, who only goes by Gwen, is three years his senior. Dominic is a semi-famous historian and author, who mostly works from home, whilst Anthea was the internal communications manager for a major mobile phone company. Galahad has lived his entire life in Bellington and has little knowledge of the world outside of it; the furthest he’s ever traveled has been to London for school trips and holidays. Dominic had always adored Arthurian myths and legends, writing three books on the subject, and Anthea shared in his interest, although not to the same degree. The agreed to name their children after prominent figures in these legends, making sure, at the same time, that they would not be subjected to teasing and taunting because of it, and selecting names that would be unlikely to raise too many eyebrows. The first couple of years of Galahad’s life were uneventful, but tragedy stuck when he was three years old. Anthea, whilst on a business trip to France, drowned after slipping into a canal during torrential rain. The news reached the Matthews two days later. Galahad was more confused than anything, too young to truly understand what was going on, but Dominic was inconsolable. He retreated to his study, barely exiting it for a year, hiring a childminder to look after Galahad and Guinevere when they were home from nursery and school, respectively. Galahad was already a quiet child, and although his knowledge of the situation was limited, the sudden disappearance of his mother and seldom appearances of his father pushed him further into his shell. He spent most of his time reading storybooks with his childminder, and once they’d finished with his collection of books, drawing and scrawling out his own stories. Due to this taking up the vast majority of Galahad's time, his reading proficiency was above the average level for most children his age, although for the most part he much preferred his childminder to read for him. After over a year of mourning, Dominic finally made a concerted effort to raise and look after his children to the best of his abilities, looking after and playing with Galahad and Guinevere when they were at home, with the help of their childminder, picking them up from school, taking them to any extra-curricular activities and going to any performances or productions of such. Unfortunately, although his heart was in the right place, Dominic was very obviously woefully unprepared for the tasks of being a single father. He was a scatterbrained man at the best of times, and would frequently be late to pick his children up, or leave the dinner to burn, or perform other similar absent-minded actions. Galahad found that many of his classmates, and several of his teachers, were very sympathetic towards him. For the most part, this was in regards to the loss of his mother, but on a number of occasions, they cast scorn upon Dominic's behaviour as a father, stating how sorry they were that Galahad had to deal with it. Each time this happened, however, Galahad would fiercely defend his dad: even from a young age, he understood just how hard Dominic worked every day, and that he'd clearly been suffering, and so was willing to overlook the occasional burnt meal. Unfortunately, though Dominic’s scatterbrained nature improved over time, another aspect of his personality did not. He was encouraging and supportive of anything his children were interested in, but he also had a tendency to decide what he thought they’d be interested in and push them towards it. Guinevere offhandedly mentioned that ballet dancing sounded interesting one day, for example, so Dominic made a concerted effort to push her towards that, signing her up for classes and doing everything he could to make her a superstar ballet dancer. From a young age, Galahad enjoyed watching football with his father; it was simple to understand and absorb, and it was an activity that brought him even closer to his father, despite the fact the two supported different teams, with Galahad supporting Liverpool FC and Dominic supporting West Bromwich Albion. In fact, this seemed only to further Galahad’s enjoyment of watching the sport, as it created a friendly rivalry between the two, comparing positions in the league table to one another and eagerly watching Match of the Day together whenever the two teams faced each other to see who had won. Dominic has supported West Bromwich Albion since he was a child, and has ties to the area as his brother lives there, but the first game Galahad watched involved Liverpool, and he began to support them because of how much he liked the players on the team. However, Dominic figured that because Galahad enjoyed watching football so much, he would also enjoy playing it, and just like with Guinevere, he enrolled his son in the local football team, and urged him to join the school football team as well. Galahad was hesitant, having absolutely no sporting inclination in the slightest; he much preferred the sound of staying indoors where it was warm to watch the action, rather than being a part of it. However, he didn’t want to disappoint his father, and so did as Dominic wished, joining the football team in both primary and secondary school. He struggled with the sport right from the very first training session. He was decent at controlling the ball, but lacking in every other aspect of his play, especially when it came to his speed, strength and shooting ability. Galahad was assigned to be the reserve goalkeeper for the team, and he quickly grew to dread each practice session, knowing he’d be coming home covered in mud and bruises. He kept at it, however, for two reasons. The first, and biggest reason, was that he didn’t want to disappoint his father, but the second reason was that despite his lack of skill, he developed a rapport with the other members of the team; he was friendly, easy to talk to and able to take a joke, and would always offer support to his teammates in practice sessions, or from his position on the bench in actual matches. Whilst playing football clearly wasn’t where Galahad’s talents lay, another sport caught his eye in his first couple of years of secondary school; hockey. In primary school, there had been a couple of PE classes where they had brought out hockey sticks and balls to practice a few basics of the sport. Galahad had greatly enjoyed these classes; like with football, he was good at controlling the ball, but didn’t require as much raw strength to excel at hockey. As a plus, most of his classmates also had little experience with the sport, so when he discovered that Saint Editha had a hockey team, he was eager to join, as he would be on a level footing with the rest of his teammates. However, Dominic disapproved of this. He didn’t consider hockey as worthy a sport as football or rugby, and believed that Galahad would be made fun of and teased for being part of the team. Though he never outright forbade his son from joining the team, he consistently pushed him away from it and towards the football team via verbal suggestions and the like, which Galahad quickly cottoned on to. Still terrified of disappointing or hurting his father, Galahad made no further attempt to join the hockey team, though he was severely disheartened, and found his mood taking an even further downswing. Things came to a head during the summer holidays after Galahad’s second year of secondary school. His love of reading and creating worlds and the stories within them when he was a child had only grown in the years since then; he had a number of short stories and a couple of novel beginnings written up on his laptop, that he made a point to spend at least an hour per day working on. His main enjoyment in writing came from creating characters, fleshing them out, making them feel believable and likeable, or unlikeable depending on the character. He would often get his sister or his friends to read portions of his stories, and he loved seeing the reactions his characters brought out. Because of this, Galahad wished to pursue an education that focused on creative writing in some manner; his English classes at school were focused more around analysing other pieces of literature, whereas his Drama classes allowed for a lot more creativity and creation. He mentioned to his father his long-term plans for his time at secondary school; that he wished to focus on Drama most of all, and that he planned to take it for Sixth Form, alongside English when more creative writing opportunities would be available. However, again, Dominic disapproved. He, personally, didn’t think a Drama A-Level would be useful for Galahad, and was quite eager for his son to follow in his footsteps and study History. Galahad realised his father was attempting to push him away from another one of his interests, and broke down, telling Dominic through tears just how badly he was making him feel, and how disheartened he’d been feeling recently. Dominic was stunned, dismayed at Galahad’s reaction, as he had been completely unaware of how his son had felt about his own actions. It dawned on him that he’d messed up badly; Guinevere was barely speaking to him and refusing to go by anything other than ‘Gwen’, and Galahad was in a severely depressed state. After several solemn apologies, Dominic promised not to interfere so heavily with Galahad’s interests, and to support him in his love of hockey and creative writing. Since then, their relationship has grown strong, with Dominic proving an incredibly supportive father, watching all of Galahad’s hockey matches and helping him out with his writing and other interests. Gwen's relationship with Galahad, however, is almost as bad as her relationship with her father. The two were never particularly close to start with, as their interests never matched up, and Gwen always held a position of superiority over Galahad due to being the elder sibling. She grew to resent her father for how pushy and overbearing she found him, hating him for how she felt like he was controlling her life, which is what led to her ceasing conversation with Dominic and abandoning her birth name. She considers Galahad weak and pathetic for forgiven their father, and has stated to his face that she pities him for his meek nature. Although this, naturally, upsets Galahad, he does not consider it a huge loss; as stated, they were never close to begin with, so drifting further apart has not affected him too greatly. Galahad’s focus on his drama classes blossomed into a much greater interest of theatre and the stage. He fell in love with scriptwriting from the moment his class asked for it; he finds that script and playwriting has a heavy focus on characters and characterisation, which was always his favourite part of writing, and enjoys the challenge of bringing his characters to life on the stage. He has a rather ambitious stageplay on his hard drive that he’s currently working on, devoting time over the weekends to it. His love of scriptwriting has made Galahad heavily involved with the theatre club at school. He’s often been called upon to help write or edit any scripts they’re currently working on, and whilst he has no interest in acting itself, he regularly helps out around performance time with tech work, manning the lights, moving props and helping out in the sound booth. He enjoys this work, as it allows him to feel as though he’s part of the performance without actually being on stage, and it allows him to get even closer to the members of the theatre club. Recently, Galahad has acquired a taste for ROM hacking, and the community surrounding it. When he was younger, he owned a second-hand GameBoy Advance that he treasured greatly but unfortunately lost a few years later. On a whim, he searched eBay to see if he could get a replacement, but unfortunately, he made two attempts at purchasing one, both of which were from less-than reputable sellers, who ended up selling him duds. Losing faith in the site, Galahad searched for alternatives, and stumbled upon a forum dedicated to old game ROMs and ROM hacking. He was fascinated by the idea of taking game data to be able to be played on a computer, and whilst he was initially concerned due to the slightly nebulous legality of the subject, he convinced himself that it was okay, as he owned the games he was concerned with, just not the means to play them. He has, very slowly, been learning the tools used to hack and edit game ROMs, and is currently labouring his way through an edit of Pokemon Fire Red, mainly centered around inserting himself and his friends into it in various locations. Today, Galahad is well liked and popular amongst the majority of his peers. He’s maintained his warm, friendly personality since childhood, and is generally regarded as very easy to get along with and talk to, although many question his choice of best friend, Freya Nygård, a fellow student at Saint Editha, who is almost Galahad’s opposite in terms of personality. The two first met during a class project, and quickly became friends, as Galahad appreciates Freya's blunt nature, as it means he knows they'll always be honest with each other, and the fact that she truly does care about him, even if she struggles to show it. He is aware that she's not the most popular person at school, and has made a number of enemies with her abrasive personality, so he does his best to convince as many people as he can that she's a good person behind her attitude, although this is to limited success. He also has a number of friends across various areas of the student body; he’s friends with many of the theatre kids, but he’s also a member of the hockey team, as well as the football team as he is still worried about disappointing his father if he leaves. He plays fullback for the former, and is officially still the reserve goalkeeper for the latter, although he mostly just warms the bench and fetches water bottles instead. However, despite his popularity and likability, Dominic’s controlling nature during his childhood has lead to a major flaw in Galahad’s personality. He’s meek and submissive, and most people refer to him as a doormat behind his back. If he’s asked to do something, he’ll do it almost instantly, and if any ideas or points he makes are countered by somebody, he’ll quickly drop them and apologise. He’s been taken advantage because of this several times in the past, with people getting him to do their work or share part of his lunch just by asking nicely. He’s also gotten into trouble a few times because of how easy it is to persuade him to do something. Perhaps because of how easy it is to influence him and sway his point of view, Galahad has developed a habit of second-guessing himself frequently, and struggles to make decisions; even when it comes to deciding where to go to eat, Galahad will struggle to decide, and will let other people do so for him. Dominic is aware of how easily Galahad gets pushed around, and feels incredibly guilty because of it, heavily blaming himself for this issue. He has had a couple of sit-down talks with Galahad, to try and help his son to be more assertive and confident in his own ideas and decision making. Whilst Galahad has done his best to put this into practice, the results haven't been too successful. He particularly struggles when people attempt to push him in different directions: it will take him a very long time to decide on which side to go with, often irritating both sides in the process, and he generally goes with the person he likes or trusts more, rather than what his heart says is right, which frequently leads to him regretting his decision afterwards. When it comes to his education, Galahad generally does well, getting As and high Bs in his drama, English and PE classes, and Bs in most of his other classes, with only his foreign language classes regularly dipping below C grades. Most teachers consider him a model student, as he is generally attentive and contributes well in class. A few, however, have much lower opinions of him; these teachers are the ones who have to deal with him whenever he’s been coerced into breaking rules or getting into trouble by other students. Galahad plans on going to university after graduating, and has his heart set on a creative writing degree in the next three or four years. Advantages: Galahad is a very likeable young man. Along with the large number of friends he already has, he should find it easier to make and gain allies. He’s also in shape from playing hockey and sporadically playing football, and while he’s not particularly strong or fast, he’s got good endurance and stamina. This could also lead to Galahad being underestimated by people who aren’t on the hockey or football teams. Disadvantages: Galahad is incredibly meek and submissive, and generally a massive pushover. He’s liable to do almost anything he’s asked to do, especially if there’s a real threat behind it, which is a very likely occurrence during the Program. He also struggles with indecisiveness, often relying on his friends to make decisions for him; on the rare occasion that he does put forward his own opinion or decision, it’s very easy to shoot him down and pull him towards a different view. Designated Number: Male Student #4 --- Designated Weapon: Fireman's axe Conclusion: Wow, never seen a walking doormat before. Unless he can grow a spine at hitherto unrecorded speeds, then it's night-night for this knight. The above biography is as written by Pippin. No edits or alterations to the author's original work have been made. Evaluations )]] Handled by: 'Pippin '''Kills: ' 'Killed By: ' 'Collected Weapons: '''Fireman's axe (assigned weapon) '''Allies: ' 'Enemies: ' 'Mid-game Evaluation: ' 'Post-Game Evaluation: ' '''Memorable Quotes: Other/Trivia Threads Below is a list of threads containing Galahad, in chronological order. Memories: *Only Got Bad Things On My Mind When I'm With You Sandbox: *The Man Who Wrote Thriller Program V3: *And T'Were Well That She Stood *Cake By The Ocean *Now Look At This Net *P - I - P - E - S *If The Nineth Lion Ate The Sun *Out of the Depths of Sorrow and of Sacrifice (PV3 Endgame) Your Thoughts Whether you were a fellow handler in SOTF or just an avid reader of the site, we'd like to know what you thought about Galahad Matthews. What did you like, or dislike, about the character? Let us know here! Category:Program V3 Characters